Chocolate mousse, or “mousse” usually encompasses a chilled dessert with a pudding type texture, that retains this texture for a limited amount of time. The generally known traditional processes have included placing chocolate type slabs or cooking chocolate in a warmed liquid, such as water or milk, and stirring the materials until it becomes smooth, and separately adding egg yolks and/or egg whites and/or whipped cream, followed by cooling down the preparation. The steps for preparation usually require a long amount of time, potentially expensive ingredients as well as skill, in order to prepare a “mousse” that is not too liquid or too sticky. Furthermore, the traditional mousse is known to have high amounts of carbohydrates, which make the dessert undesirable for most people who wish to watch their weight.
Dried powder products have been introduced over the years, that allow for cold liquids such as cold milk to be mixed with the dried powder products. The dried powder products have usually consisted of cocoa powder, chocolate powder, sugar and powdered fat, which can also include flavor extracts, emulsifiers, and colorings. These off-the shelf powder products are easier to prepare than the traditional process described above. However, the powdered products have been known to suffer from being poor in sensory quality, which makes them undesirable to be used. In addition, the dried powder products also suffer from having high amounts of calories and carbohydrates, which make the dessert undesirable for most people who wish to watch their weight.
Various patents have been proposed over the years. For example, the inventor is aware of U.S. Pat. No. 4,587,130 to Stauber; U.S. Pat. No. 4,631,196 to Zeller; U.S. Pat. No. 4,663,176 to Arden; U.S. Pat. No. 4,818,554 to Giddey et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,456,936 to Toonen; U.S. Pat. No. 5,853,785 to Nayyar et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,869,125 to Lynch et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,962,058 to Ono et al.; and patent application publication US 2002/0127322 to Bisperink et al. However, none of these patents overcomes all the problems with the prior art described above.
Thus, the need exists for solutions to the above problems with the prior art.